Hokkaido Part II: Sounkyo and Shiretoko National Parks

(Republished with photos)

We took a　bus　to　Sounkyo　Onsen　hot　springs,　which　I　accidentally　called　Sounko Onsen　(unko　means　shit　in　Japanese) but I will never call it that again! Our hotel was in a beautiful valley of hot springs and red and yellow fall leaves, and during our stay we soaked in three different sets of baths. My favorite was an outdoor bath under the brightly colored fall leaves, which felt especially wonderful in the cool mountain morning air.

Our morning plan was to hike up Mount Kurodake in Daisetsuzan National Park, Japan’s largest national park.

Mt. Kurodake is 1,984 meters, or 6,000 feet, pretty high when you’re coming from near sea level. We took a rope-way (cable car) up part way, then a ski lift and then we hiked the last two very rocky and steep hours.

We had great views of the fall leaves, and at the peak we took pictures and ate a great lunch scavenged from our hotel’s delicious buffet breakfast.

During the hike we saw a couple of chipmunks. In Japan it’s nothing special to see monkeys but people think it’s exciting to see chipmunks and squirrels! Below is a photo of the peak we hiked to, seen from the ski lift on the way down.In Japan, it's always easy to get a box lunch. Here, we had dinner at the bus station.

From Sounkyo we took a bus and train to Abashiri, where, with some English-speaking Chinese tourists, we had the freshest sashimi breakfast ever at the fish market next to the harbor.

Afterwards we watched as workers loaded huge metal boxes of freshly caught salmon onto a semi truck.

Then we took a tiny train, consisting of just two cars, along the coast to the Shiretoko peninsula, a world natural heritage site and the most remote place in Japan.

In Shiretoko National Park we hoped to see higuma bears in their wild and natural habitat, not trained ones like the posing bears in Kamikawa, cute as they were. (I think bears are really not supposed to be cute). But most of Shiretoko is roadless, hiking is difficult, dangerous and illegal without a permit, and we were still limping after the rocky climb up Mt. Kurodake. So we took a sightseeing cruiser boat along the north coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula through the Sea of Okhotsk which borders some Russian islands all the way to the peninsula’s tip.

Along the way we saw lots of beautiful coastline, many amazing waterfalls, cormorants, and finally a higuma bear! The bear was fishing in the mouth of a stream. It was beautiful to watch such a huge creature jump and leap after salmon with such agility!

During the last part of the boat trip we got completely drenched with salty spray, so after a quick cold limping walk back to our hotel we enjoyed a wonderful soak in the hotel’s hot springs before dinner. There were three large pools on the seventh (top) floor of the hotel, one colored and scented with lavender. From these pools we looked out over the harbor and the ocean – a beautiful view but not as amazing as the view from the outdoor pool on the rooftop above the seventh floor! There we soaked outdoors breathing fresh air while enjoying a view of the ocean.

Since all of our clothes were wet we used the hotel’s coin laundry machines. We looked around for a soap vending machine before we realized that the washing machine was equipped with soap and would automatically add the right amount at the right time! I continue to be amazed by Japanese technology.

The next morning we took a short hike in the five lakes area and saw some beautiful views of lakes reflecting the surrounding mountains. Access to three of the lakes was closed due to recent bear activity.

In the afternoon we ate delicious sushi including sea urchin, a local specialty, which Itsumi likes more than I do. Then we took a train back to Abashiri.

Abashiri is famous for its prison, a cold and miserable, largely unheated outpost on what once was the Japanese frontier. Abashiri is as famous for its Siberian air as Alcatraz is famous for its rocky, desolate island. We didn’t visit the prison, which is still in operation, but we took the obligatory photos of ourselves behind the fake prison bars at the train station before heading back toward central Hokkaido.

Hokkaido Part I, Ice Museum and Higuma Bears

(Republished with photos added)

Itsumi and I are on vacation in Hokkaido, Japan’s north island. We flew here from Tokyo’s domestic airport and I learned that, if you need to remove your shoes during screening, the security people give you a pair of slippers to wear in accordance with Japan’s rules about shoes. In addition, you don’t have to show photo ID in order to enter the secured area. A ticket is enough. And best of all, you can bring plastic beverage bottles through security! They are scanned by a security machine, and this eliminates the massive throwing away and repurchasing of water bottles that occur at U.S. airports every day.

We arrived in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, where we bought lunch boxes and ate them on a bench in front of the train station, under the beautiful sun. We bought one box of fish including sushi and fresh crab, and another box of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan is popular in Hokkaido and means Mongolian barbecue. Our Genghis Khan contained lamb and sautéed vegetables and rice, and we heated it by pulling a

string in the packaging that ignited some kind of heating material underneath the food.

In 3 minutes, it was piping hot! (But the packaging is probably not very good for the environment). We took a　train　to　Kamikawa　where　we　went　to　the　Ice　Museum　which　advertises　temperatures　of　-41　degrees　Celsius (-42 degrees Fahrenheit).

Paying to visit extremely cold temperatures seems like a silly thing for a Minnesotan to do, and this place was quite the tourist trap, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to see what a museum says about temperatures that low. It turned out Kamikawa has the Ice Museum because the town once registered real temperatures of -42 degrees Celsius, the coldest registered temperature in Japan. Before entering the museum the docent had us blow soap water bubbles through a wand to see how the bubbles behaved at a normal temperature. Then we put on parkas and entered the Ice Museum, which consisted of a long and windy tunnel through ice formations and was indeed very cold, especially since we weren’t dressed like Minnesotans!

The temperature in the ice tunnel was actually -20 degrees C (just -4 degrees F) but that felt plenty cold especially with bare hands and trying to blow bubbles and take pictures. Some of the bubbles did indeed freeze when they hit the ground, and I must say that I never thought to blow bubbles in the winter in Minnesota!

Then we got to the main draw of the ice museum, the -41 degree part. It turns out that the real temperature was still just -4 F, but we pushed a button that caused a ten second wind storm creating a wind chill of -41 C (-42 F). Although I've experienced real temperatures of colder than -40 F and a windchill of -75 F in Minnesota, I must say it was very hard to endure ten seconds of the wind chill effect! We literally ran to the exit of the museum where I took this photo of Itsumi with a frozen wet towel.

Outside, in the beautiful sunny fall weather beneath birch trees like the ones in Minnesota we saw higuma bears, Hokkaido's brown bears. They are VERY big, bigger than any other bears I've ever seen! But these bears, a side attraction at the ice museum, were in a rather sad condition, confined in a cement enclosure and waiting for tourists to throw food pellets provided by the museum. As we entered carrying our bags of pellets, the bears struck many cute poses, some even like yoga poses, hoping to be rewarded with treats. Unfortunately, by visiting this attraction we encouraged it to continue.

This bear tries to catch a treat thrown by a tourist.

There were also a few Kodiak bears from Alaska, which have very long claws but are smaller than the higuma bears.

The town of Kamikawa reminds me of North Dakota with its wide empty streets, tiny business district and small grocery store where the locals gossip about each other. This is a part of Japan much different from the Tokyo area which I have become accustomed to!

Barcode Hair

My favorite new Japanese expression is "barcode hair," pictured above. Second favorite: "pudding hair." Pudding means flan in Japan, and pudding hair is dark hair dyed blonde, with dark roots growing out on top.

Summer yukata

Hello everyone,

I haven't written much lately because I've been working many consecutive shifts this summer. Japanese people want to go up into the mountains to escape the heat of Tokyo during the summer, and consequently my English classes up in the mountains are really busy!

But I have had a day off in Tokyo here and there to relax, and on one of those days recently I wore the yukata that I received as a birthday gift and walked to a nearby shrine to take a few pictures.

In the photo I'm carrying a furoshiki, or wrapping cloth. The furoshiki is a square piece of beautiful fabric, and Japanese people can tie it into many beautifuly styles of handbags. Here, I tied a simple one using two wooden rings. The furoshiki was a birthday gift from my friend Mika.

I hope you're all doing well and I will catch up a bit on my blogging when my work schedule settles down. I enjoy receiving your emails even though I haven't been so good at answering lately!

Dance Festivals!

During summer, there is a festival almost every day in Tokyo! Itsumi and I attended two dance festivals recently. The first was a samba festival, in the style of Brazilian carnival.

This festival may have originated because of the many Brazilians living in Japan. Many of the Brazilians in Japan are actually Japanese who immigrated to Brazil in the early 1900s when opportunities for farmers were better in Brazil than in Japan. Later, some of these Japanese-Brazilians immigrated back to Japan in order to work in the booming industries here. Now that there is a recession, Japan is encouraging this labor force to move back to Brazil. Just as in the U.S., immigrants are sometimes welcomed here and other times encouraged to leave, depending on the economy.

In any case, the samba festival consisted of a parade of dancers dressed (or barely dressed) in beautiful costumes. A few dance troupes were comprised of Brazilians, but most of the dancers were Japanese.

The skirts on the compasses pictured below twirled around and around.

The costumes were beautiful and I was so happy to see samba, but I felt like the dancers didn't dance with the same energy and dedication as the carnival dancers I saw in South America.

I also noticed that the audience consisted mainly of older men with big cameras!

The next weekend, Itsumi and I went to an awa-odori festival, which is a type of Japanese dance performed to Japanese instruments.

Although a typhoon blew in part way through the parade, the dancers danced with as much energy as I've ever seen anywhere.

The women in the awa odori parade dance on their toes while wearing geta, or traditional Japanese shoes. They danced on their toes through the entire parade route, and I never saw so much energy!

The samba festival was beautiful, but the Japanese dancers were simply wearing another culture's costumes and dancing to another culture's music. The awa odori festival, in contrast, is a Japanese tradition and despite the typhoon the dancers danced and the musicians played with all of their energy, and it was truly beautiful.

Maid Cafe

I visited a maid cafe yesterday. Maid cafes are popular in Akihabara, a section of Tokyo where the otaku hang out. Otaku are hard-core fans of anime and manga, and they enjoy the fantasized French-style maids who serve the customers as a maid would serve her "master" and "mistress" in their home. I heard that the maids greet customers by saying "welcome home master" but if they said this I wasn't able to understand it.

Customers are not allowed to take pictures inside the cafe, but I managed to take a couple of shots of maids on the street, inviting potential customers to visit the cafes. There are more than 30 maid cafes in Akihabara.

Really, I thought the "maid" service was not much different from service in a typical Japanese restaurant (which is much better than service in American restaurants, and you are not expected to tip). But the maid server did lots of cutsy things like making a cute drawing using ketchup over a plate of food. She drew a ketchup bunny, and as she drew she said, in a little girl voice that I can't even begin to imitate, "these are the ears, and the nose ..." For my benefit she said this in English. One visit to a maid cafe was enough for me. The food wasn't so great, and I don't really care for the idea of being "served" by a maid, but it was something to see once.

Also, it helped me see the importance of fantasy in Japanese culture. Japan is a huge exporter of its fantasy culture such as anime and manga.

People can go to a maid cafe and enjoy the fantasy of being served by a maid for an hour or two over coffee and dessert. But like all fantasies, some people take it too far. Maid cafes often have printed rules warning customers not to touch the maids, not to ask for their phone numbers, and not to wait outside the cafe for a maid to finish her shift.

There are also butler cafes, which cater to women customers, and cross-dressing cafes where men dress as maids or women dress as butlers.

More information about maid cafes is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_cafe.

Soba

Soba are buckwheat noodles, a common food in Japan. You can eat soba noodle soup at cheap restaurants where the customers eat standing at a counter, or at expensive specialty restaurants where the soba is made by hand in the front window of the restaurant, as pictured here.

Soba noodle soup is eaten with chopsticks, and should be slurped. I find it funny to stand in a restaurant eating soba with twenty standing slurping strangers. I like eating soba with chopsticks, but I'm not very good at slurping. At first it took me longer than average to eat a bowl of soba, but now I can eat it as quickly as the other customers.

Below is a plastic model of a plate of soba. Japanese restaurants usually have realistic-looking plastic models of their food in the front window. This is great for illiterate folks like me. The factory that makes most of this plastic "food" is in the mountains not far from Tokyo, and I've heard that tourists can try their hand at making plastic food there for a small fee.

I also like soba in the form of tea, made by pouring hot water over buckwheat kernels in a mug. More information about soba is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soba.